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A White-Tie Dinner for Queen’s White House Visit

Prince Philip, Laura Bush, Queen Elizabeth II and President Bush arriving for Monday's state dinner.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 7 — Presidents come and go, but for more than half a century, the queen has always been the queen.

So it was perhaps no surprise that Washington went a little gaga on Monday, as Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, began an official two-day visit to the capital.

Across the Atlantic, Helen Mirren, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Elizabeth in “The Queen,” shocked the British conscience over the weekend by turning down an invitation to dine at Buckingham Palace.

But on this side of the ocean, Her Majesty was making Americans go weak in the knees.

The White House was decorated to perfection for an exclusive white-tie dinner on Monday evening, with President Bush and the first lady, Laura Bush, playing host to the royal couple and 130 other A-list guests. But the morning was reserved for the masses — or, at least, the masses with the kind of connections that warrant an invitation to the formal arrival ceremony on the South Lawn.

Lucky ticket-holders — more than 7,000 of them — began lining up at 7 a.m. to get in: women in fine hats carrying floral bouquets, little girls in chiffon dresses, boys and men in their best suits, toting cameras and craning their necks for a glimpse of what one called “the real deal.”

Joy Green, whose daughter scored tickets by virtue of her job at the Justice Department, flew in from Selma, Ala., for the occasion. “I think we love it that they have a queen,” she said, explaining the American fascination, “and we’re glad that we don’t.”

At 10:56 a.m., six minutes past schedule, she arrived, a small woman in a black and white hat, white gloves, a white jacket and black skirt. Drums rolled and trumpets blared. There was a gasp in the crowd, and a squeal: “I see her! I see the queen!”

It was a day for pomp and circumstance — a military color guard, a fife and drum band in white wigs, red jackets and tricornered hats — punctuated by a presidential slip of the tongue that lightened the moment during Mr. Bush’s welcoming remarks. Mr. Bush reminded the 81-year-old queen that she had already dined with 10 American presidents.

“You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 —— ” he went on, stopping to correct himself before 1776 could slip out. The crowd erupted in laughter, and the president and the queen turned to each other for a long, silent gaze. Then, Mr. Bush turned back to the crowd with an explanation. “She gave me a look,” he said, “that only a mother could give a child.”

Mr. Bush had been the recipient of such a look once before in the queen’s presence — from his own mother, back in 1991, when the first President and Mrs. Bush played host to their own state dinner for the queen. By several different accounts, including Mr. Bush’s own, Barbara Bush told the queen that she had seated her son far away from Her Majesty, for fear he might make a wisecrack.

Then, to his mother’s horror, he did, telling the queen that he was his family’s black sheep and asking, “Who’s yours?” The queen, apparently not amused, replied tartly, “None of your business.”

If the queen was not amused on Monday, she did not show it. “I’m sure she accepted it for what it was — a slip of the tongue,” said her press secretary, Penny Russell-Smith. The ceremony was laden with pleasantries and reminders of the close ties between the two nations, as well as a brief foreign policy lecture from Mr. Bush, who made clear that Iraq was not far from his mind as he thanked the queen for “your leadership during these times of danger and decision.”

The queen, in turn, thanked the president, for “this opportunity to underline the extent of our friendship — past, present and future.”

The royal visit began last week with a trip to Jamestown, the original English settlement in Virginia, and will conclude Tuesday with a visit by the queen and Prince Philip to the Children’s National Medical Center, and another dinner, this one at the British Embassy.

For the White House, the visit is a welcome break, a chance for a beleaguered administration to catch its breath and ready itself for what Mrs. Bush promised would be “a fun and festive evening.” She spoke to reporters on Monday afternoon, to offer a sneak preview of the evening affair.

The State Dining Room was brimming with white roses, vermeil centerpieces and pearl-handled flatware. The five-course menu, featuring “spring pea soup with fern leaf lavender,” “saddle of spring lamb,” and three different wines, was set. Dessert petit-fours were on silver platters for the press corps to taste. The chief florist, Nancy Clarke, was busy checking petals and stems.

The guest list, a must-read for Washingtonians, offered a smattering of surprises: Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, who openly criticized the administration over the interrogation of terror suspects; Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican who lost his leader’s job in 2002 after the White House helped orchestrate a coup; and Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode the winning horse at the Kentucky Derby. (The queen attended Saturday’s race.) Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, was the featured entertainment.

The dinner is the first, and probably the only, white-tie event of the Bush administration, and Mrs. Bush confessed Monday to what is by now an open secret: she enlisted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk Mr. Bush into wearing formal attire. “We thought if we were ever going to have a white-tie event,” Mrs. Bush said, “this would be the one.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: The Queen Visits the White House, and the President (Mostly) Minds His Tongue. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe